(photo credit: Steve Clemons, The Washington Note)
(This article is appearing simultaneously at TheAtlantic.com)
News is breaking that the prosecutor's case in the rape allegations against former IMF Director and French political kingpin Dominique Strauss-Kahn is collapsing.
According to reports, the accuser who worked at New York's Hotel Sofitel has allegedly been engaged in money laundering activities and has had substantial contact with an incarcerated drug dealer. Strauss-Kahn's bails and terms of detention are reportedly going to be lightened today -- and others are suggesting that felony charges may be dropped against him.
Maybe he did harass this woman -- but it is also possible that he did not. That's what the system of justice is for -- to presume innocence until guilt is determined. That no longer sounds likely in this case.
But this week, former French Finance Minister Christine Legarde was named Strauss-Kahn's successor at the International Monetary Fund, and back at home, French Socialist Party Leader Martine Aubry declared her candidacy for President.
Strauss-Kahn, who may be innocent, who even Sarkozy said should be presumed innocent unless evidence led to a different conclusion, now cannot return either to the IMF or to his position as the next likely President of France.
One of the fears that I often hear from people when talking about the growing power of social network sites, blogs, as well as micro-journalism and micro-comment platforms is the one of scandalmongering, or a tsunami of mistruths and reputational attacks that take down some high profile person.
A good read on this sort of thing is the late William Safire's historical novel, Scandalmonger, which shares what slander blogging might have been like in late 18th century America in the person of James Callender who doggedly pursued, occasionally inventing, sleazy stories about both Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.
I have generally argued, and may be wrong, that the internet is a much more honest and disciplining arena than print, that errors, mistakes, or misreporting would be instantaneously sniffed out and corrected by a global audience. I know I have gotten things wrong before and had emails or posted comments that helped me put my information on a better, more accurate track. But that isn't always the case, particularly in growing clusters of same-thinking people who care less about sorting out the facts than they do about the frame (or bias) they bring to some respective issue.
But in today's fast-paced world, a reputation can be destroyed rapidly -- and if, as in the case of Strauss-Kahn it seems, the consequences of charges made actually precede the processing of those charges, then we as a society are no longer extending the benefits of presumed innocence that are core to our form of democracy and our legal system.
I realize given the proliferation of commentary about Strauss-Kahn's alleged womanizing and the bandwaggoning criticism of him that built after his arrest that he is perhaps a flawed and tragic figure.
But the problem of reputation wrecked still stands whether the target is warm and likeable or a brilliant storm, as I see Strauss-Kahn, and that lesson is a bad one for people on the internet, who are becoming commentators and writers, to learn. They see the successful effects of attack, whether based in truth and credibility or not, and sense that the downsides of backlash and consequence to an accuser's or scandalmongerer's credibility are not serious.
When Georgia State USDA rural development director Shirley Sherrod was fired by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for making 'alleged' racially-tinged remarks, we also saw consequences meted out before the entire story of that video, brought to light by Andrew Breitbart, was properly considered.
There is no clear fix to these problems. We don't have a system that would let Strauss-Kahn have his job back, and Aubry is not likely to step aside in her presidential quest and let DSK go back and take the top spot challenging Sarkozy.
Again, I am not saying that I know if he did or didn't engage in lewd conduct against a hotel chambermaid -- but his legally-based presumed innocence has been inconsequential to the penalties that he's already received, and that's something that should worry us.
-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic and can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons
Anyone else seeing an influx of blog headlines that go “Updated: [Thing That We Just Wrote About] Is A Hoax”?
While Internet hoaxes have been around since the Soviet Union wanted to join Usenet in 1984 (remember LonelyGirl15?), we’ve had quite a few doozies this week, from the woman who got a tattoo of 152 of her Facebook friends on her arm, to the eHarmony user tearing up over her love of cats, to the kidnapped lesbian Syrian blogger turning out to be a not kidnapped married guy in Scotland. Heh.
People have always been gullible, and gullible people having access to methods of dissemination like Facebook and Twitter only turns their folly up to eleven. But aren’t we as reporters paid to be filters of news, in essence paid to know better? Then why the rampant media coverage of every single one of these hoaxes?
The only answer I can come up with is that the demands of churnalism (or the recently dubbed “hamsterization” of journalism) and the quest for advertising traffic are only increasing for bloggers as more and more readers spend more and more time and money online. This begs the question: How many of us uncritically posting on incredulous rumors and unverified viral stories are cynically calculating how even more traffic will inevitably come from our correction posts (“Update: This Was A Hoax, Again”)?
Perhaps the more innocent among us are fooled by the fact that the Internet has also increased the amount of ridiculous but true news. Media frenzies like #Weinergate and Sarah Palin’s description of Paul Revere’s ride remind us that there is plenty of bona fide news that people wish was fake, making the tech media landscape pretty much a crapshoot for bloggers focused on speed.
Even we covered that Facebook Friends tattoo story as if it were serious news. And how I wished that that story were real, letting me transform it into some bloated pseudo-intellectual weekend think piece about the ephemerality of online friendships and the quest for permanence in a digital age. Instead you guys get this.
It was only after I discovered that the susyj87 YouTube user account only had uploaded one video prior to “My Social Tattoo” and any kind of identifying details about the poster were nowhere to be found did I drop it as a viable source for reblogging, moving on (quickly as always) to the next source of news. But man, like everybody else, I wanted to believe that some idiot got this breathtakingly dumb tattoo. I mean it could happen, right?
In 2011 a retweet can function as the online equivalent of gawking at a car crash, even when the story seems too good (or more likely, bad) to be true. Perhaps this is why the hashtag #SeriouslyMcDonalds was a trending topic this morning, after a sign mandating African American McDonald’s patrons pay a $1.50 surcharge went viral. Even McDonald’s Twitter account quickly declared this a “hoax”, but the #SeriouslyMcDonalds hashtag continues to appear in around 20 tweets a second.
Perhaps the most interesting hoax story to come out of an slow summer week otherwise filled with Apple news, was the tale of a David Voelkert, who was arrested after his ex-wife lured him into revealing his plans to murder her, by posing as a teen admirer on Facebook.
While the initial wave of stories were along the lines of “Man Arrested After Wife’s Facebook Teen Ruse SHOCKER ,” the updates to the story provided a very interested interesting twist, as it turns out that Voelkert suspected that his wife was behind the fake profile and went to a notary in order to prove himself innocent before sending the otherwise incriminating messages.
Voelkert did what we bloggers should be doing more of, taking what happens online with a grain of salt. Granted, he probably had way more time.
Image: Yfrog
Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World Scandal
But before Stewart could expound on his point, correspondent John Oliver presented him with a recap of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World scandal--a friendly reminder that the British will always find a way to out-shame ...
Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World ScandalDispatches from the new <b>news</b> landscape, Univision edition | Felix <b>...</b>
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has a brother-in-law with a rather embarrassing past.
Dispatches from the new <b>news</b> landscape, Univision edition | Felix <b>...</b>CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>
The watchdog group Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is calling on Congress to investigate Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for evidence that the company's sprawling phone hacking scandal reached the United ...
CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>bobby ferguson
Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World Scandal
But before Stewart could expound on his point, correspondent John Oliver presented him with a recap of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World scandal--a friendly reminder that the British will always find a way to out-shame ...
Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World ScandalDispatches from the new <b>news</b> landscape, Univision edition | Felix <b>...</b>
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has a brother-in-law with a rather embarrassing past.
Dispatches from the new <b>news</b> landscape, Univision edition | Felix <b>...</b>CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>
The watchdog group Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is calling on Congress to investigate Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for evidence that the company's sprawling phone hacking scandal reached the United ...
CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>
(photo credit: Steve Clemons, The Washington Note)
(This article is appearing simultaneously at TheAtlantic.com)
News is breaking that the prosecutor's case in the rape allegations against former IMF Director and French political kingpin Dominique Strauss-Kahn is collapsing.
According to reports, the accuser who worked at New York's Hotel Sofitel has allegedly been engaged in money laundering activities and has had substantial contact with an incarcerated drug dealer. Strauss-Kahn's bails and terms of detention are reportedly going to be lightened today -- and others are suggesting that felony charges may be dropped against him.
Maybe he did harass this woman -- but it is also possible that he did not. That's what the system of justice is for -- to presume innocence until guilt is determined. That no longer sounds likely in this case.
But this week, former French Finance Minister Christine Legarde was named Strauss-Kahn's successor at the International Monetary Fund, and back at home, French Socialist Party Leader Martine Aubry declared her candidacy for President.
Strauss-Kahn, who may be innocent, who even Sarkozy said should be presumed innocent unless evidence led to a different conclusion, now cannot return either to the IMF or to his position as the next likely President of France.
One of the fears that I often hear from people when talking about the growing power of social network sites, blogs, as well as micro-journalism and micro-comment platforms is the one of scandalmongering, or a tsunami of mistruths and reputational attacks that take down some high profile person.
A good read on this sort of thing is the late William Safire's historical novel, Scandalmonger, which shares what slander blogging might have been like in late 18th century America in the person of James Callender who doggedly pursued, occasionally inventing, sleazy stories about both Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.
I have generally argued, and may be wrong, that the internet is a much more honest and disciplining arena than print, that errors, mistakes, or misreporting would be instantaneously sniffed out and corrected by a global audience. I know I have gotten things wrong before and had emails or posted comments that helped me put my information on a better, more accurate track. But that isn't always the case, particularly in growing clusters of same-thinking people who care less about sorting out the facts than they do about the frame (or bias) they bring to some respective issue.
But in today's fast-paced world, a reputation can be destroyed rapidly -- and if, as in the case of Strauss-Kahn it seems, the consequences of charges made actually precede the processing of those charges, then we as a society are no longer extending the benefits of presumed innocence that are core to our form of democracy and our legal system.
I realize given the proliferation of commentary about Strauss-Kahn's alleged womanizing and the bandwaggoning criticism of him that built after his arrest that he is perhaps a flawed and tragic figure.
But the problem of reputation wrecked still stands whether the target is warm and likeable or a brilliant storm, as I see Strauss-Kahn, and that lesson is a bad one for people on the internet, who are becoming commentators and writers, to learn. They see the successful effects of attack, whether based in truth and credibility or not, and sense that the downsides of backlash and consequence to an accuser's or scandalmongerer's credibility are not serious.
When Georgia State USDA rural development director Shirley Sherrod was fired by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for making 'alleged' racially-tinged remarks, we also saw consequences meted out before the entire story of that video, brought to light by Andrew Breitbart, was properly considered.
There is no clear fix to these problems. We don't have a system that would let Strauss-Kahn have his job back, and Aubry is not likely to step aside in her presidential quest and let DSK go back and take the top spot challenging Sarkozy.
Again, I am not saying that I know if he did or didn't engage in lewd conduct against a hotel chambermaid -- but his legally-based presumed innocence has been inconsequential to the penalties that he's already received, and that's something that should worry us.
-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic and can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons
Anyone else seeing an influx of blog headlines that go “Updated: [Thing That We Just Wrote About] Is A Hoax”?
While Internet hoaxes have been around since the Soviet Union wanted to join Usenet in 1984 (remember LonelyGirl15?), we’ve had quite a few doozies this week, from the woman who got a tattoo of 152 of her Facebook friends on her arm, to the eHarmony user tearing up over her love of cats, to the kidnapped lesbian Syrian blogger turning out to be a not kidnapped married guy in Scotland. Heh.
People have always been gullible, and gullible people having access to methods of dissemination like Facebook and Twitter only turns their folly up to eleven. But aren’t we as reporters paid to be filters of news, in essence paid to know better? Then why the rampant media coverage of every single one of these hoaxes?
The only answer I can come up with is that the demands of churnalism (or the recently dubbed “hamsterization” of journalism) and the quest for advertising traffic are only increasing for bloggers as more and more readers spend more and more time and money online. This begs the question: How many of us uncritically posting on incredulous rumors and unverified viral stories are cynically calculating how even more traffic will inevitably come from our correction posts (“Update: This Was A Hoax, Again”)?
Perhaps the more innocent among us are fooled by the fact that the Internet has also increased the amount of ridiculous but true news. Media frenzies like #Weinergate and Sarah Palin’s description of Paul Revere’s ride remind us that there is plenty of bona fide news that people wish was fake, making the tech media landscape pretty much a crapshoot for bloggers focused on speed.
Even we covered that Facebook Friends tattoo story as if it were serious news. And how I wished that that story were real, letting me transform it into some bloated pseudo-intellectual weekend think piece about the ephemerality of online friendships and the quest for permanence in a digital age. Instead you guys get this.
It was only after I discovered that the susyj87 YouTube user account only had uploaded one video prior to “My Social Tattoo” and any kind of identifying details about the poster were nowhere to be found did I drop it as a viable source for reblogging, moving on (quickly as always) to the next source of news. But man, like everybody else, I wanted to believe that some idiot got this breathtakingly dumb tattoo. I mean it could happen, right?
In 2011 a retweet can function as the online equivalent of gawking at a car crash, even when the story seems too good (or more likely, bad) to be true. Perhaps this is why the hashtag #SeriouslyMcDonalds was a trending topic this morning, after a sign mandating African American McDonald’s patrons pay a $1.50 surcharge went viral. Even McDonald’s Twitter account quickly declared this a “hoax”, but the #SeriouslyMcDonalds hashtag continues to appear in around 20 tweets a second.
Perhaps the most interesting hoax story to come out of an slow summer week otherwise filled with Apple news, was the tale of a David Voelkert, who was arrested after his ex-wife lured him into revealing his plans to murder her, by posing as a teen admirer on Facebook.
While the initial wave of stories were along the lines of “Man Arrested After Wife’s Facebook Teen Ruse SHOCKER ,” the updates to the story provided a very interested interesting twist, as it turns out that Voelkert suspected that his wife was behind the fake profile and went to a notary in order to prove himself innocent before sending the otherwise incriminating messages.
Voelkert did what we bloggers should be doing more of, taking what happens online with a grain of salt. Granted, he probably had way more time.
Image: Yfrog
Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World Scandal
But before Stewart could expound on his point, correspondent John Oliver presented him with a recap of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World scandal--a friendly reminder that the British will always find a way to out-shame ...
Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World ScandalDispatches from the new <b>news</b> landscape, Univision edition | Felix <b>...</b>
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has a brother-in-law with a rather embarrassing past.
Dispatches from the new <b>news</b> landscape, Univision edition | Felix <b>...</b>CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>
The watchdog group Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is calling on Congress to investigate Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for evidence that the company's sprawling phone hacking scandal reached the United ...
CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>bobby ferguson costs
Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World Scandal
But before Stewart could expound on his point, correspondent John Oliver presented him with a recap of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World scandal--a friendly reminder that the British will always find a way to out-shame ...
Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World ScandalDispatches from the new <b>news</b> landscape, Univision edition | Felix <b>...</b>
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has a brother-in-law with a rather embarrassing past.
Dispatches from the new <b>news</b> landscape, Univision edition | Felix <b>...</b>CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>
The watchdog group Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is calling on Congress to investigate Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for evidence that the company's sprawling phone hacking scandal reached the United ...
CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>bobby ferguson directory
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